Tangled Up in Blue
by Summoner Luna
Summary: Everything she had seen and had yet to see-everything existing at the same time. -Quistis, coming out of Time Compression, and the meaning of family-


Coming out of Time Compression wasn't anything like she expected, if she had thought to have expectations about it. They'd had time to think about what it would be like when it started-an apocalyptic landscape of sorts, even if none of them had been quite right.

Her consciousness must have expected it to end similar to when it started. Or maybe a blur of everything she had ever seen and had yet to see-everything in the world existing at the same time.

What she hadn't expected was blank whiteness, or to see her friends while she was there. Always right in front of her and still too far away, and maybe that _was_ everything existing at once. She could hear them, but as if underwater, and she kept running until they were gone and she found herself in her own landscape entirely, that hidden expectation finally coming into play as her entire life seemed to appear to her simultaneously. The parents she never knew, the orphanage, the family she never should have had, arriving at Garden, her own SeeD graduation, and the war itself, merging into one.

_Just pick something, pick one memory and hold onto it. _It was what they all had to do, right? What she had told them? But where?

Waking up to wind and waves, she was not surprised they had made the same decision. Zell was the only one awake, standing right on the shoreline in a rare moment of stillness; Selphie and Irvine were there, as though sleeping. She debated trying to wake them, but a voice rang out, soft, ethereal, violet silk streaming towards them.

"They must find their way on their own. They have already begun."

"Matron," she spoke, her voice overlapping with Zell's and he looked at her, eyes shining.

"My children...you have won." She stood at the foot of the stone steps, opening her arms as she moved towards them, and for a moment Quistis felt like she was a child again.

"Heeeeey...you guys beat us!" Selphie's voice rang behind her, lighter than it had been in weeks.

"Whatever...you two are just slow!" Zell threw a hand up dismissively; Quistis was not surprised he had been the first to arrive. Zell had known family in a way the rest of them hadn't, so naturally it would occur to him first. In contrast, she had clung to the orphanage whether she realized it or not. Now that everything was over, maybe she would have a chance to talk to Selphie and Irvine about their own Garden and pre-Garden experiences. They just accepted the bonds from their youth without question, but in truth they still had a lot to learn about each other.

"So does this mean we all made it?" Irvine slurred, joining them at Matron's side, but his voice lacked confidence and they all seemed to realize at once the fact Quistis had shamefully overlooked.

"Squall..." she breathed out, squinting down the beach for any shadow, any movement. Surely...surely he didn't come this far just to get lost?

"And Rinoa, she's missing too!" Selphie chirped, lightness already sinking once again into masked concern.

"Matron...is Rinoa...is it because she..." Irvine, always looking at something beyond the obvious.

"No. If anything, she will have an easier time finding her way. She was, after all, part of what brought you there."

"So why haven't they showed up? I woke up first and was lookin' for him, but neither of them were here. They did...make it out, right?"

Matron, always composed, looked uncharacteristically sad and Quistis felt her breath catch.

"It was Squall, who first told me about SeeD." She spoke less to them, and more to the air itself. Four-way glances, but none of the orphans felt it appropriate to comment. "He arrived here, almost thirteen years ago, and brought with him a Sorceress."

"Rin-"

_"Zell!"_

"Sorry!"

"I inherited the power of Sorceress Ultimecia, and she faded. He then introduced himself as a SeeD, trained at Garden to defeat the Sorceress."

"You inherited the power-"

"Ultimecia came _here_-"

"So Squall _did_ try to-"

"SeeD was Squall's id-"

"Children!" Their voices cut immediately with her cry, heads hung in shame for their disrespect. "If he is lost, she will find him."

They fell silent, left to their own interpretations of Matron's story. That was how she was-how it seemed she had always been. She never told them stories straight, she always made them figure the ending out for themselves.

_But those were always fiction,_ Quistis thought to herself, unsure of just what Matron wanted them to know. She had heard Cid tell Squall more than once that his position was "destiny," that he was born to command SeeD; had it been because Cid knew Squall would be the one of them to fall into the past? Somehow, that couldn't seem important now, not compared to the fact that he and Rinoa were both missing.

She looked to her friends, and then to the sea itself, noting the reflection on the waves as the cloud cover began to break away, rolling almost too rapidly into the distance.

"Ah. They've arrived." Matron's voice still managed to startle her, and she turned, expectant.

"How do you know?"

"Just wait." There was something about the way she spoke that made her believable, no matter what she said. Maybe it was why Ultimecia chose to use her? No, those days were over.

She heard a sigh from Zell and moved to stand closer, placing a hand tight over his shoulder and he looked at her, grateful. Irivine did the same for Selphie, the other girl's cheeks shining. They would be okay...Matron would know if they weren't, right?

"Why did you listen?" She finally asked. The silence drug out, but she dared not repeat the question.

Finally, "It needed to be done. Perhaps in our rush, we were too hasty in choosing homes, but something needed done. To protect you, to protect Ellone, to protect the world...from me."

"You just believed him? I mean, not that Squall would lie about that but you didn't know that back then, did you?"

"Zell, if somebody you know today visited you from the future, would you have reason to doubt them? Perhaps there would have been no need. But we see now, there was. Imagine, if Squall had not come here first?"

And they did. Life without Garden, without SeeD. Would they have found each other? Would they have been the ones to face Matron at all? Or would there even have been need?

She would never be quite certain who saw them first, or how long they had even been there, but all four of them noticed without speaking the shadows that had appeared, climbing from the ruins onto the beach, appearing at first as one until two figures began to take shape.

Quistis hesitated in disturbing them, waiting for some signal that it was okay to approach, but Selphie was running before their silhouettes had quite come into focus, breaking free from Irvine's grip with a cry that could have been shock but was more than anything joy, and she knew because it echoed her own. Zell was next, and then Irvine, and Quistis herself, trying not to cry even as she realized it was her own tears that blinded her.

"You made it, we're all here!" Selphie was nearly bouncing, and may have been if she didn't have her face pressed against Irvine, clinging to the hand of Rinoa's that wasn't occupied by Squall's.

Rinoa held a strange composure Quistis had rarely seen, and Matron's words came back again, _"She was part of what brought you here. She will find him."_

_"Thank you."_ She didn't speak, but knew the sorceress understood, and then looked up, tears finally breaking at the sight before her, at the relief of her fears undone.

"You made it," she stated plainly, making eye contact with Squall for the first time in her life without seeing walls.

"We made it."

* * *

_This actually fits vaguely into the canon of a full-length story I have been working on (without much success...) for quite awhile now. Partly inspired by 'Somewhere in Between,' the AU story by Ashbear and Wayward in which Squall arrives at the orphanage later than the others; partly by the fact that the map drawings in the game are a little discontinuous (there is no beach seen in any of the scenes in the flower field, and there is no flower field on the map or from any other scene at the orphanage EXCEPT the promise scene; and partly from the aforementioned head canon I have. I also think Quistis is the best point-of-view for this, as she is the most isolated of them all-Selphie and Irvine have each other, and Zell would be more likely to cling to Edea for her maternal connection to the group. That, and I just love Quistis. :)_


End file.
